Stephen Fry on critics

As a child I saw on television a film starring Alistair Sim called The Green Man. Like almost any picture featuring that incomparable genius it contains moments of as absolute a joy as one is ever permitted on the sublunary plane. Watching it made me wriggle with delight, but more than that, it made me want to have something, anything, to do with a world where such pleasures were possible. The film was again shown recently on television. In the listings column of a Sunday newspaper the other week it was described as ‘a thin, ultimately unsatisfactory vehicle for Sim’. Now I would never claim that my liking for the film is definite, de gustibus and all that, but look at the style of this remark. How typical it is of everything that must displease about critics. The vile possessive impertinence of this jumped-up hack referring to the man by his surname, the ex cathedra1 dismissal, the cold contempt, the complete absence of anything approaching enthusiasm or love.

It may be true that critics perform a service, that actors and writers and artists need their egos deflating, that the public needs to be advised about how, where and when to spend their money on artistic activities, that ‘standards’ must be maintained. All the foregoing may be fine and convincing reasons for the existence of critics. The point is that no one would volunteer for this dreadful trade but the kind of worthless and embittered offal that we, by and large, get. What decent person would want to spend a life picking and cavilling? Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. ‘And what did you do?’ asks Saint Peter. ‘Well’, says the dead soul. ‘I criticised things’. ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, “thin and unconvincing”, “turgid and uninspired”, “competent and serviceable,”…you know’.

I think we can guess Saint Peter’s reaction.

The man has a way with words. I’m not convinced there’s any virtue in deflating egos or maintaining ‘standards’, but I definitely agree with the overall point. It would be far more pleasant if critics did their best to enhance my enjoyment of music/tv/film/theatre, instead of extracting joy and crushing it with cynicism and hate. Tell me the stories behind the art, tell me about subtle meanings I might miss, tell me of homages and references and detail. Don’t give me arbitrary film theory, elitist pretension, snide irrelevancies and tirades against the mainstream. I’ll make my own decisions about what I enjoy, thanks. I don’t care what critics didn’t like, I care about what they did, because that makes my life better.

hadn’t heard this before – it apparently means speaking from a position of infallible authority [↩]